CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos has, according to Forbes, become the richest person in the world after stocks of his company rose 1.6% on Thursday.

Forbes had reported Wednesday night that Bezos was less than $1bn away from being the richest person in the world.

Bezos’ net worth had increased by $2.5bn this week alone, with stocks of his company rising 3.6%.

He is now worth $90.6bn, becoming the first man ever to top a $90 billion fortune.

He is now $500m ahead of no. 2 Bill Gates, who is the founder of Microsoft.

Bezos quit his job at a hedge fund to start his online bookseller in a garage in Seattle in 1994.

He first featured on the 400 richest Americans list in 1998, a year after Amazon went public, with a $1.6 billion fortune.

Gates’ first inclusion in the billionaire’s list was in 1982, and he has been no. 1 for 18 of the past 23 years.

Forbes reports that Bezos would be nowhere close to being the world’s wealthiest person had Gates not given so much of his fortune to philanthropy.

UPDATE

Bill Gates is back on the number one spot as the world’s richest person.

According to Bloomberg Amazon’s shares fell 0.7 percent to $1,046 at 4 p.m. in New York, after climbing as high as $1,083.31 four hours earlier, which gave Bezos a net worth of $92.3 billion. Gates had a net worth of $90.8 billion as of the Wednesday close with Bezos’s being $89 billion.